re-discovering joy

Man, I just got done reading some stuff. Blogs, emails, notes on facebook, one of my husbands' papers and I am just filled to emotional overflow. Not because the things I read were so heart-rending or happy or anything--it's just the way I react.

I see people behind these words, and their struggles and their gifts. I see their children and their parents. I see their stories--the stories being woven into them by the Master Craftsman. I am thrilled, I see hope for the future in it, I am glad.

And I have joy. Bit by bit it is creeping back to me after the hurts, the dark blue and sometimes black threads, of my own story. And I realize that in order to re-capture joy, I must grieve. I realize that the tears and the acknowledgement of pain and the mourning over sin is right and good. It is not right to respond with a desire for life to be fair and just, because that would mean I would be cut down and thrown out--I would deserve justice in the sense of judgement, not vindication. When I get on that track of anger, and wishing for things to be made right, to prove how right I am, it is only a means of escape from truly feeling the weight of the sadness...It is a way to control, impersonalize, and cope--and it is empty and heavy all at once.

...but then my burden is lifted, my chin lifted to look into the eyes of my Brother-Lord, and my hand taken so that I might rise and stand on the secure footing that is Him. And I have joy.